Jeremy Clarkson made £144 farming a thousand acres in his first year.
In year six he lost five thousand.
His own words to his land agent: dispiriting enough to clear a hundred and forty-four quid at the start, and here we are six years on, down five grand. The harvest had been projected at thirty-seven thousand profit. Weather and prices took it.
Now look at what that thousand acres has behind it that yours does not.
One of the best land agents in the country. A farm manager who has worked that ground since he was a teenager. A farm shop with a queue down the lane, a pub, bestselling books, more than a quarter of a million in subsidy across three years, and a television production paying for the entire thing to be filmed.
It is the most commercially advantaged thousand acres in Britain, and the farming still loses money.
That figure should end every conversation about British agriculture, and it is the one number that never makes it onto a campaign graphic. Not the glyphosate. Not the pig housing. The margin.
Because everything people object to on a farm grows straight out of it. The field pushed to the very edge. The hedge that came out because the government paid to have it removed. The shed instead of the yard. The supermarket contract signed below cost because the alternative was no contract. Nobody intensified out of malice. They were priced into it over sixty years by a policy that decided cheap groceries mattered more than a countryside, and by a retail sector that kept the difference.
Britain now grows around sixty per cent of its own food. More than a third of British farmers are past sixty-five.
The man with the Amazon cheque cannot make a thousand acres pay.
The seventy-year-old with three hundred and no film crew is doing it anyway, and being told by people who have never sold a tonne of anything that he is the problem.
@JoshFerme Very well earned. You have always been an insightful contributor to the Lotus Eaters, and Restore have added yet another impressive mind to their arsenal, aiming at the challenge ahead! Congratulations Josh!
@SrtaLexus23 Si fuera solo la tarde bebiendo… Cuando ganes una copa del mundo lo entenderás. Por cierto te recomiendo tomar el sol, debes tener la serotonina y la dopamina por los suelos.
🇫🇷 Hier soir, un Français catholique de 37 ans est décédé après s'être précipité dans l'église de son village, muni d'un extincteur, pour tenter de la sauver des flammes.
Il s'est retrouvé piégé à l'intérieur alors que le feu se propageait.
Nos prières accompagnent sa famille 🙏🏻
In a dark sense, he is correct. The ultimate “liberty” to choose death is just the logical conclusion of the liberal project. Having thrown off all other unchosen constraints, why not annihilate life itself?
I hate these type of tweets. They are a pathetic response that tries to take on the leftist framework of the Middle Ages to turn it against them, which utterly fails
Those who constructed Cathedrals and Great Churches received some of the best education and training available
This vile politician is an absolute disgrace. I hope you can all see why we at The Rape Gang Inquiry refused to work with her. Her only interest was money, and she has spent the last year doing everything in her power to undermine the inquiry.
Despicable.
@Kingbingo_ Yes, but have you considered the fact that it’s because they would never lie, and their sole mission is to spread the truth and nothing but the truth. Seriously second rate thinking from you. Do better next time!
@Kingbingo_@firasmodad I expected it to be far more scathing, patronising, and condescending. But given it was a Guardian article, the bar could’ve been cleared by a jump from Steven Hawkings